We need to clarify something for you...Your beer doesn't
fermen for x number of weeks.
Beer only ferments for as long as the yeast takes, which is usually about a week. The rest of the time a beer is left alone is for
conditioning .
You don't CHOOSE how long a beer ferments for.....you let the yeast do it's job...you want a beer to finish fermenting.
Many of us leave out beers a minimum of 1 month, skip secondary and bottle. Many folks have left their beer a year in primary with no issues. The longest I have ever had has been 5.5 months, and the beer was fine.
And CAN WE PLEASE quit throwing the autolysis boogeyman around like it's a FACT EVERYTIME someone wants to know how long is safe to leave a beer in primary or secondary....
It's out dated information!!!!!
the whole Autolysis boogeyman, that even JOHN PALMER admitted he got wrong and created un needed panic.
John Palmer actually retracted what he said in HTB. He discussed it in a couple podcasts, at one of the homebrewer's conferences, and a discussion with Jamil, which are all quoted and referenced in the thread I posted below.
Some of his original initial comments like the one at the conference seemed to echo verbatum what I and a few others had said when we began these discussions and recording our experiences on here 4 years ago. I believe a lot of the shift can be attributed to us here. Which influenced basic brewing and byo magazine to start the dialogue more pubically.
Nowadays even many instructions, in BYO magazine, and even some kits suggest a long primary as opposed to using a secondary. So it's pretty obviously that they're not buying that bogeyman anymore either.
I suggest you read THIS thread, it's become the "uber discussion" on this topic thread.
To Secondary or Not? John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff Weigh In .
This is a misoconception that so many people have, autolysed yeast and dead yeast are NOT the same thing. And folks need to grasp this, and quit worrying about autoysis. It's just not an issue for us....
Autolysis is to yeasts what peritonitus is to humans, it's a specific condition. Everyone who dies doesn't have their intestines rupture and rotten bacteria dump into their bloodstream.
NOR does every yeast cell that dies dump the contents of IT'S cells into the beer. If that were the case every beer we ever make would autolysize...
Autolysis is
not the inevitable end of healthy yeast. It is the unnatural end that is a product of yeast health...like peritinitus or even cancer in us....it is an abberation....UNHEALTHY AND STRESSED yeast autolyse... but rarely do we have unhealthy yeast these days, most of the yeast we pitch is fresh...and unless we are making a huge beer, even underpitching will not NECESSARILY produce stressed out yeast. Or stressed out yeast that will automatically autlolyse....
Most yeast that folks call dead, is actually dormant. Like most of what's in the bottom of the fermenter when fermentation is complete. And the yeast is indead dead, a lot of it is canibalized by the living yeast. And the rest, if the yeast was healthy to begin with, is just dead....think of it as natural causes, it's not necessarily spilling it's "intestinal" goop into our beer.
As Palmer and Jamil have said it is a RARE occurance these days that yeast actually dies anymore,
let alone actually autolyses. It just goes dormant when the job is done and waits for the next round of sugar (much like when we pitch on top of the old yeast cake- which even some commercial brewers do for multiple generations.) The cells rarely rupture and die off.
It's not like 30 years ago (when most of those opinions that you espouse about autolysis originated from) when our hobby was still illegal, and there wasn't a lot of FRESH yeast available to us. The yeast used in hobby brewing was usually in cake form, which came from Germany and England in hot cargo ships and may have sat on a store shelf for a long time....or the brewer just used bread yeast.
Palmer even said this in the broadcast I quote from above-
So the whole health and vitality of yeast was different back then compared to now. Back then it made sense. You had weaker yeast that had finished fermentation that were more susceptible to autolysis and breaking down. Now that is not the case. The bar of homebrewing has risen to where we are able to make beer that has the same robustness as professional beer. We've gotten our techniques and understanding of what makes a good fermentation up to that level, so you don't need to transfer the beer off the yeast to avoid autolysis like we used to recommend.
Yeast in the 21st century is much healthier to begin with, and is less prone to have issues like their cells autolysing....just like our own health tends to be better these days.
That is not a concern that should be tossed around like it's a sacred fact,.
People have left beers alone ON THE YEAST for a year with no issues.....So when someone asks how long it's safe you don't have to offer up the ole autolysis chestnut like it was inevitable.